d to be mere
Dalai-Lama pills, manufactured let not refined lips hint how, and quite
_un_salvatory to mankind. Every one may remark what a hope animates the
eyes of any circle, when it is reported or even confidently asserted,
that Sir Robert Peel has in his mind privately resolved to go, one day,
into that stable of King Augeas, which appalls human hearts, so rich
is it, high-piled with the droppings of two hundred years; and
Hercules-like to load a thousand night-wagons from it, and turn running
water into it, and swash and shovel at it, and never leave it till the
antique pavement, and real basis of the matter, show itself clean again!
In any intelligent circle such a rumor, like the first break of day
to men in darkness, enlightens all eyes; and each says devoutly,
"_Faxitis_, O ye righteous Powers that have pity on us! All England
grateful, with kindling looks, will rise in the rear of him, and from
its deepest heart bid him good speed!"

For it is universally felt that some _esoteric_ man, well acquainted
with the mysteries and properties good and evil of the administrative
stable, is the fittest to reform it, nay can alone reform it otherwise
than by sheer violence and destruction, which is a way we would avoid;
that in fact Sir Robert Peel is, at present, the one likely or possible
man to reform it. And secondly it is felt that "reform" in that
Downing-Street department of affairs is precisely the reform which were
worth all others; that those administrative establishments in Downing
Street are really the Government of this huge ungoverned Empire; that
to clean out the dead pedantries, unveracities, indolent somnolent
impotences, and accumulated dung-mountains there, is the beginning of
all practical good whatsoever. Yes, get down once again to the actual
_pavement_ of that; ascertain what the thing is, and was before dung
accumulated in it; and what it should and may, and must, for the life's
sake of this Empire, henceforth become: here clearly lies the heart of
the whole matter. Political reform, if this be not reformed, is naught
and a mere mockery.

What England wants, and will require to have, or sink in nameless
anarchies, is not a Reformed Parliament, meaning thereby a Parliament
elected according to the six or the four or any other number of "points"
and cunningly devised improvements in hustings mechanism, but a Reformed
Executive or Sovereign Body of Rulers and Administrators,--some improved
method,